I have come to a conclusion. That being that writing is my therapy. Any type of writing, mind you, and it always helps. It can be writing on my phone, like I am now, or my labtop or even my notebook. It does not matter, and I think knowing this going forward is key for me.

I have always known that I loved writing, but after a couple days of writing again, I feel great. I like writing fiction and I like writing for this blog, but I love writing articles that require some research and thought. Research is not always necessary, but it makes it a lot more fun.

What I like about editorial writing is mainly how I can connect to others with my writing. This has happened many times. I have been in student newspapers ever since I have been in college. First Livewire at HACC, and now The Snapper at Millersville. I truly think that my love of writing has broke the shell that I had put around me prior to college.

At Livewire there were three people who truly helped me, and now I consider those three good friends. When I transferred to Millersville I joined as a staff writer and was that for two weeks. I then became opinion editor for the paper. Alongside my fellow HACC alumni, Robert as my associate editor, we did quite well with opinion.

With HACC, I credit them for the initial shell break, and I want to thank them for doing that. The Snapper crew has now completely demolished my shell.

I want to thank Livewire and The Snapper for all they have done for me.

I have recently become involved in a charity organization in Lancaster, PA. It is known as Rebel Cause Lancaster.

What is great about me joining Rebel Cause is the validation that it gave. Prior to learning about the group I was close to a point where I did not know what to do with Star Wars. I still loved the franchise, but I had no one to share this love with. I am not even sure how I came across Rebel Cause, but I wrote an article about them for my school newspaper, The Snapper. You can find the article here.

I never imagined what would become of my interaction with Kaden Patrick, the illustrious leader of Rebel Cause, at the American Bar and Grill in Lancaster. Long story short, I joined up with Rebel Cause as a social media/ writer guy.

We recently had an event at a bar in Lancaster called Rumplebrewskins. The event was a great success and I am amazed at how the Star Wars community came together to raise money for Water Street Rescue Mission. It made me proud to be a Star Wars fan once again.

I had lost that pride prior to meeting Kaden and getting it back was one of the greatest feelings I have ever had. Star Wars means many things to me, but the main thing is it was, and continues to be, my rock. It has always been there for me and I will always appreciate what it has done for me.

Knowing that Rebel Cause has my back now is great. Like I said earlier, I feel valid in my love for Star Wars.

I try hard to understand social cues and the like. To be honest, I am steadily getting better at it. Then I mess up something and I feel worthless each time.

The “fumble” in question had to do with political stuff. I have a democratic socialist viewpoint and majority of my family do not, or do not care enough.

That being said, I get in debates with various members of my family about the current President, Donald Trump. In my opinion he is incompetent and dangerous. Nothing that he has done has been beneficial to this country. Now, this is my opinion and I respect others rights to having their opinions. I think the critical thinking required to understand politics has helped me.

I hate that politics create rifts between me and other family members. It tears me up inside. I, from a moral standpoint and many others, can not support the current President.

The fact that I brought politics to this blog upsets me. I do not want to be that type of blog. I want it to help others on the autistic spectrum and those associated.

It seems when I mess up socially, I need to process it. I look back at the conversation for hours trying to figure what I could have done. I know this to a frivolous pursuit though. Learning to accept what the past is and using it as a learning tool should be how I approach it.

I am sitting at a table in the house staving off a panic attack because of this. Wishing I could change how I acted prior. Writing all of this is helping though.

I am going to continue doing my best, but I need others to know, I am not perfect. About as far away as you can be actually, but I’m trying.

So I am feeling depressed right now. Instead of dwelling in self hatred; I have decided to try to help others who suffer from depression. To do this I am going to look at my feelings right now. Analysis will come after, alongside some reflection.

To start, my anxiety is also quite high. I would say a 7/10. Why am I anxious? Mainly from thinking about the future, my romantic interests, my grades, and my job. All are pretty big things I imagine. It seems to choke me with anxiety. What I do distract myself is two-fold. I go into my local game store, LGS, and I play games. Such as magic the gathering or DnD. The distraction helps, but is not a cure all for me. I have to figure out ways to curb my anxiety. To do that I need to pinpoint some triggers for myself.

One of my biggest triggers is becoming social. This is not a bad thing, yet it is still a trigger. Anxiety, for me, has always been a way for me to figure out my comfort levels. Nowadays I purposefully put myself in situations that cause me anxiety. I want to know the limit of how much I can take.

It’s not much today, unfortunately. Little things set off my anxiety. The silver lining being that it was just a small amount of anxiety. Management of this level of anxiety comes pretty easy for me. Walking around Lancaster city is a trigger for my anxiety and I have come to be really good at managing this type of anxiety that I get.

Back to the original question though, and I still find myself unable to answer well enough to satisfy myself. Thinking on it, I can say with confidence, that I am unsure of my future. I know I want to finish college and graduate, and I want to get a job. Besides those two goals; I am at a loss of what I want from life.

I want a lot of things for my life to pan out and I am not confident that they ever will. I feel like I have fallen off of any motivation that I might have had to pursue those things either.

The main thing that I find I have been struggling with is my feelings for others. I have them, and they are quite strong, but I am afraid of rejection and I feel like a coward for not outright asking them to go out sometime. I have been burned multiple times, I think, and I don’t like the feeling that I get when I am rejected.

That feeling is an overwhelming anxiety at that moment. That is pretty much it for my romantic centric stuff.

I did okay this semester with my grades. I feel like I need to do much better though. I hold myself to a standard that I am not meeting. It’s weird, I get anxious and depressed about my grades so I try to distract myself from it and I then do bad on my projects. That leads to me doing bad at school. It’s a vicious cycle. I need to figure out a way to regain my motivation.

My depression is the main wall in getting my motivation back. I have spots of high motivation, but they last a couple days at most. Then my depression comes creeping back.

I have anxiety about my job mainly because I missed two days. This was due to a medical issue, but it still caused me a lot of anxiety. I tend to have bouts of imaging the worst possible thing that could happen, happen. I am enjoying my job a lot now though and logically I cannot see anything bad happening.

The way I dealt with this bout of depression, and many others, is attacking it with logic. I have a logic based thought process and using that is great for getting rid of anxiety and depression. I simply tell myself that depression does nothing to positively affect me. It is a negative feeling. Logic dictates that I do not need it. The same for my anxiety.

This is a way that I deal with my anxiety and I know it works for me. I am always looking for other ways to approach my depression, and I would like to see if other ways work well for others. Please comment if there is a technique that you use that really helps you. Thanks for reading.

I tend to overthink from time to time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, yet it troubles me when it happens. It has, unfortunately, become a habit of mine to react. My reaction is usually screwing up something. This is due to me overthinking something and then thinking some more on it.

Thinking on it, when I am like this, it usually is because I get in a social mood. What I mean by this is I talk to a lot of different people. That then translates to more social cues and interactions. I tend to mess up those two sometimes. I am practicing working on this though.

With more social cues comes more thinking and overanalyzing said cues. Or just missing them completely. That is still super common for me.

I am trying really hard not to overthink stuff. I just do though, and its definitely something that needs work. Then again, I do not know if it is something that can be worked on. It might just be something I deal with from having autism. If so, no big deal, I will just move on. If it is something I can work on, well, then it needs investigated, and ultimately, conquered.

Regardless of how it turns out, it is a trait of mine I would like to work on. To at least better my understanding of the puzzle that is autism.

I have been up for three hours and I am being torn down by depression this morning. It might be that I am super anxious and I cannot deal with that either today. I do not know what is wrong with me today. Therefore I am blogging about it. This seems to be a great way for me to deal with my depression and anxiety.

I do not like being depressed, but it seems that being depressed likes me. I have, at least, three episodes a month of crippling depression. Unfortunately, I cannot be depressed today. I have obligations to The Snapper. The student newspaper that I am opinion editor for. Having a sense of nausea and a general bad feeling is not helping the case either.

If I am being honest with myself, I think I am a failure today. I took Rondo out this morning and I could not stay out that long without getting scared. It may sound weird, but the outside is too big for me right now. With that being said, I need to campus today so I can work on my layout for the Snapper. It is the fear that I cannot do those two tasks that I am getting anxious and depressed. It is a vicious cycle taking place right now.

I could use a pep talk, a hug, or just a hello this morning. Even though its almost noon, I still want something. I know, deep down, what is bothering me. I am too afraid to talk about it though with anyone. I do not have the courage to talk about it on here, and I am too afraid to talk about it in therapy or even with a friend. It feels horrible that I cannot even talk about it. I am scared and I do not know what to do.

I have dealt with all kinds of feelings and emotions; not this though. I want to go into more detail, but my anxiety is stopping me in my tracks. I do not want to hurt anyone and I will not hurt anyone. This is because I am not going to talk about it. Maybe I can tomorrow when I go into therapy, but I cannot right now. I do not even know if I will be able to tomorrow.

My therapists and I have good relationships. I know it is their jobs to listen, but I feel like I have built up a rapport with both of them. They have known me for almost 12 years for the first one and about two for the second one. Sufficient to say, they know me pretty well. I do not want to sabotage either of those relationships. I know, logically, that this would never happen. They are both there to help and give advice, but the illogical side of my brain is saying that sabotage is inevitable in this situation.

I need to suppress the illogical side of my thinking. I am an overthinker and I need to stop doing that. I do not want to be impulsive, but I want to be in the happy middle of overthinking and being impulsive.

The depression is still there, but I think I can get out of the house now. Hopefully, I will be able to function around people today as well. The whole time that I was writing this blog post, I was fighting with myself. I defeated my anxiety for now. I know it will come back sooner or later, preferably later, but I will deal with it at that point. I will not worry about impending anxiety.

It seems that I have times when my writing is horrible. Then, on other occassions, my writing is almost flawless.

I am looking mainly at the times that I write. The blog post that I posted earlier this afternoon was written Friday night and scheduled. With that in mind, I am going to do an experiment. To try to find out when my writing is at it’s best and when it’s at it’s worst. My hypothesis is that writing later in the day means it will be a better quality.

So, I am writing this post at 9:52 PM on Saturday night. I am going to schedule for tomorrow at noon tomorrow.

Now, for some updates. I have been having issues as of late. I do not want to go into specifics because of the sensitivity of the issue. If you want to know more, I’m sorry, it’s hard to talk about. Even with family, it has been hard to talk about.

Sufficient to say, I am torturing myself over something that I did. The guilt is piling up and grows greater every day. I am going to intensive therapy right now about this and getting the help I need.

If anyone who reads this suffers from autism and is willing to talk to me about a sensitive issue, could you please contact me? I want to talk to someone older than me and more experienced than me. I’m 26 just for reference. I want to get insight from someone on the spectrum.

I feel it’s necessary for me to talk to someone else on the spectrum. Thank you for any help that I might get.

This is my account of life as a family with my wonderful little boy Lachlan who has Autism, it is a true account of the highs and lows, the battles to be heard, understood, the emotions, the impact on my older children and wider family. What worked for us and moving forward.

I want to give voice to that which inspires me ,challenges me;that which brings the good ,the bad & the ugly out in me! I want to share my thoughts on everyday life moments -on mental health -on food & photography...There will be sharing of Memories & Stuff that have touched my soul & sparked my mind !!!